In theCube’s ongoing coverage of Sapphire Now, John Furrier spoke with Tony McCoy, Vice President, Americas Service Providers/Alliances, EMC and David Parsons, Corporate Vice President, Global Alliances and Chief Marketing Officer, CSC.  McCoy and Parsons’ partnership is fostering what Furrier refers to as “co-innovation.” The panelists discuss the evolution of the cloud, challenges for “as a service” implementations, common challenges facing customers and opportunities for further co-innovation.

Furrier suggests the cloud is, no pun intended, still “up in the air” as converged infrastructure has accelerated both confusion and opportunity. The pressure is on companies to provide effective delivery and integration.

Parsons notes it is important to modernize SAP implementation, and host it in a supported environment. He observes: “What we’re seeing is the need for a diverse horizontal platform and create on HANA unique case scenarios that are vertical.”

Given that some “as a service” programs can take months, if not years to roll out, Furrier asks McCoy how Chief Information Officers are addressing this weakness in the field. McCoy suggests that now companies are actually showing space in this area, stating: “What we’re seeing more and more is that we’re actually able to deliver on agility and the promise of agility, we also see some of the more consumer oriented cloud players out there that are setting expectations out there that have been hard to deliver on — but we’re bringing some of these things to life.”

Helping customers through partnerships

Parsons and McCoy also share insights on customer experiences and storage.  In partnership with EMC, CSC recently launched a new software designed storage option.  As an early mover in the field, Parsons suggests through “shared partnerships [EMC and CSC can] create a 3 year roadmap to address the client need” based on financial and agility requirements.

McCoy notes one recurring need from the provider perspective is to help customers understand their ability to virtualize. Over the past several years, EMC did not have a virtualized SAP. Recently, however, McCoy explains they were able to virtualize well over 90 percent of operations and have completely virtualized with SAP. For McCoy, the personal experience provides a wealth of experience to share with CIOs. Citing the banking community as an example, Parsons suggests “its all about the application modernization and right-size processing to help clients create new revenue channels and delivering our platform as a service.”

Both McCoy and Parsons’ response to those who suggest VBLOCK does not have any traction is to look at the statistics. According to McCoy, 50 percent of the market for converged systems is VBLOCK.

For Parsons, one of the most awe-inspiring trends he is seeing in the industry is the speed at which data is processed and analyzed, literally, in real-time. Citing the example of a racecar with thousands of sensors on it as a microcosm of the business world, Furrier adds enhanced possibilities and value are significant. Furrier suggests: “[Thinking of] the racecar as a business, we can measure everything. Imagine what you can do and what that will do to the value chains of the company.”